Why Linux?

[silvinodino]

Hey guys, so, I hear a lot about how Linus is so good and everyone should use it and such. but just how practical is it to the daily user? The daily user being someone with no programming experience, as I feel that Linux is an OS for programmers. 

[niofalpha]

Hipsters and people that hate Microsoft for Windows 10 security or something.

[Fulgrim]

Distros such as Ubuntu don't require much knowledge about computers, just a half a brain to figure out how to get shit to work. People still can't figure out how to use Google it seems.

[Guest]

-Security

-Themes

-Endless customizability

-Nearly everything is open source

-Command line is awesome

-Can look literally any way you want

-Can have the latest software

-Can have the most stable software

-Software practically auto updates

-Mostly free as in freedom and free as in beer

The list goes on

[Guest Kloaked]

Linux is for people who want to toy around with stuff in a more open-source environment. It's not "for programmers" as that may imply Windows isn't for programmers when it's very programmer friendly as well.

 

Linux is also for people who hate themselves.

[AresKrieger]

Hey guys, so, I hear a lot about how Linus is so good and everyone should use it and such. but just how practical is it to the daily user? The daily user being someone with no programming experience, as I feel that Linux is an OS for programmers. 

 

For a novice linux is not ideal, you need to know how to trouble shoot and what you specifically need for your applications, there are guides and easier versions to work with but still not a great ideal for a novice

 

If you really want to get into linux a virtual machine partition would allow you to become familiar with it while still having windows as a main os.

[Coaxialgamer]

Ubuntu ; linux mint  and the like require pretty much no knowledge to operate . File types are different , of course (.deb instead of .exe ), and you get less apps than for windows.

 

But you don't need to run an antivirus ( *mind explosion*).

It's much lighter ( 10% cpu usage on lubuntu on my 10 year old laptop , XP is slow AF )

 

And you don't get M$ / the NSA spying on you.

[JWMutant]

By far the best thing about Linux is I have some friends who havent had to reboot there PC for up to a 1 and a half years.

 

Aint no way you can do that with Windows.

[IsaacDaGrazin]

snippity snip

infact its so light on my pc its uses like 2%-3%

and only ONLY 200 mbs of ram on idle o-o

[JWMutant]

Ubuntu ; linux mint  and the like require pretty much no knowledge to operate . File types are different , of course (.deb instead of .exe ), and you get less apps than for windows.

 

But you don't need to run an antivirus ( *mind explosion*).

It's much lighter ( 10% cpu usage on lubuntu on my 10 year old laptop , XP is slow AF )

 

And you don't get M$ / the NSA spying on you.

Slightly off topic but you may enjoy reading this http://hexatomium.github.io/2016/01/21/amazon-roots/ if your looking for a reason to start using Linux.

[IsaacDaGrazin]

havent had to reboot

wait wot you dont need to restart/reboot on linux distros?! o-o

btw im new to linux :3 sorry for the nooby-ness

[JWMutant]

wait wot you dont need to restart/reboot on linux distros?! o-o

btw im new to linux :3 sorry for the nooby-ness

Only one of the many reasons why dedicated servers prefer Linux.

 

You can go many many many years without the need to reboot.

 

This equals low downtime.

[IsaacDaGrazin]

snippity snip

why dont you need to?

on windows i always had to reboot or i would be slow

[JWMutant]

Primary reason is because when Windows updates it may need to over write a system file that is in use which it cant do as most system files are locked while in use.

 

With Linux this is not the case files that are in use are not locked and can be modified and deleted.

[trag1c]

Ive started using linux recently and i think i am going to switch to it as i find its a lot more powerful in terms of usability than Windows.

The command line is love the command line is life.

[Azgoth 2]

Reasons to use/try Linux:

• Free!  It costs zero dollars, whichever distro you choose, and it's also free as in free speech.  You can, if you so desire, look at the source code of a distro, change or tweak the code, and then give that to other people.  ("libre" is often used to encompass the second kind of free, since most people just think "costs zero dollars" when they hear free--iTunes is free, but it's not libre, because it's closed source)
• You can very easily get free, often very high-quality libre software to do almost everything that you can do on Windows.  Media editing, office suites, etc all have equivalents on Linux.
• Compared to Windows, almost every Linux distribution is pretty lightweight. Low system resource usage means a snappier, more responsive system.
• Security!  While you do still have to be mindful of viruses and security threats, and it's still a bad idea to download random files from random websites and just run them, you don't need to worry nearly as much about security as on Windows.  There are far, far fewer known viruses/malware programs targeting Linux than Windows.
• Command line!  The command line is much, much more integrated into daily Linux use than any Windows version for the past, like, a long time.  This lets you have very quick, easy access to everything on your system, and you only need to know a few basic commands to really get a lot out of it.  There are a lot of things that are just way faster to do through a command line.  Also, some big distros are making it very easy to never really have to use the command line if you don't want to.
• Repositories!  Every distro has a software repository (or repositories) it can access.  This contains a bunch of curated programs and software packs--thousands upon thousands upon thousands for many of the bigger distros--and it's super easy to download software you need, either through the command line or through a software center.  Plus, everything can automatically be updated from the repositories, so you don't need to go download and re-install brand new versions of everything you use individually.
• Community!  Every distro has its own community, and some of them are quite large, and generally, they're very nice and friendly.  There's also a big community of just general Linux users, without regard to distro.  If you need help, there's just about guaranteed to be someone who will lend you a hand.
• You're just curious about how it works!  Since Linux costs nothing to use, there's no reason not to make a bootable flash drive or two and start playing around with it.  Or use a virtual machine.  Bootable flash drive will be faster on some machines, though, since a virtual machine has you running two operating systems at once.

Reasons to maybe not use Linux:

• Windows does everything you want it to, you don't feel like you're missing anything, and you don't have any interest in switching over to a new OS.  Don't fix what isn't broken.
• Troubleshooting.  With Windows, you can call Microsoft's dedicated help lines or speak with a service rep or whatever when something goes wrong and you don't know what it is or how to fix it.  Not so with Linux.  You can almost always ask someone in your distro's community or over on Stackexchange, and there is lots of documentation online, but you have to be reasonably good at googling your problems and reading error messages.  Also, most troubleshooting ends up requiring the command line, and if the first time you have to use it is to fix something that broke, it can be a daunting task.  BUT, most major distros like Mint and Ubuntu are extremely stable, and they don't tend to break in particularly exotic or catastrophic ways most of the time.  At worst, they might go belly-up on something about as often as a reasonably well-maintained Windows installation.
• Driver/device support is spottier than on Windows, but this is quickly becoming less of an issue.  Almost all major hardware is supported perfectly fine, but double-check if you have something kind of uncommon.
• Gaming.  While more and more games, especially indie games or smaller projects, are being made available natively in Linux, a huge number of (especially big-budget, AAA games) are still Windows-only.  Plus, driver support for AMD cards on Linux has a long history of being not as good as it probably should.  (NVidia support, though, has always been good--partly because NVidia has almost always published their own Linux drivers, while AMD has long made their driver standard open source and let the community make their own open-source drivers)
• While there are a lot of great open-source alternatives for most software you could need, there's likely going to be something you can't quite find a perfect replacement for, at least not at first.  And, some of the open-source software on Linux isn't as polished or as high-quality as the proprietary and often Windows-only equivalents.  Whether this will be an issue or not depends entirely on what programs you're using--for some, it might be pretty noticeable, while others might have all the same functionality and polish.
• If you've been a lifelong Windows user, there is a learning curve to Linux.  How steep that curve is depends on what distro you pick and whether you want to use it as just a simple everyday computer, or if you want to do some more power-user type stuff with it.  So the first few days of using it might feel weird and mildly disorienting, but it gets much better quite quickly.

That list got longer and wordier than I intended.  I, personally, switched over to using Linux as my daily driver about a month ago, and despite being a life-long Windows user before that, I'm loving it.  If you're curious and want to check it out, there's no reason not to at least make a bootable flash drive or DVD or something and play around with it a bit.  All the advice we can give you on why or why not to switch over is nowhere near as informative as you just playing with it.  I recommend giving Linux a go--you might love it.  I'd recommend you look into Linux Mint as a Windows user--the interface will feel more familiar, and that'll help ease you in to Linux, and you can always change it later.

[alpenwasser]

- snip -

Linux has been my daily driver since about 2007 (Ubuntu until 2011, Arch since then), and that list sums up my own experiences pretty well. For me, it's a much better fit than Windows. Not perfect, but better. But I'm not really all that religious about it. I consider an operating system to be a tool like anything else, and it just so happens that Linux better suits my needs and personal preferences than Windows.

Part of that is technical: I love working on the command line (just personal preference, if you like GUIs, fine by me as well), and I have found and configured my workspace pretty much perfectly to my personal quirks over the years. And I could probably come up with more things to mention here, but most of them have already been named.

The other part I must admit is somewhat a matter of personal philosophy: The way Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 is not something I appreciate, nor am I particularly fond of its data collection habits. One egregious example happened to a college buddy of mine: He was about to start an exam for which he required his PC (Win 10 on it), and the PC just decided that right then and there was the perfect time to lock down for an update. I get it, tons of users are too lazy or too ignorant to properly update their machines, but that kind of stuff is a serious No-Go for me (it also does not help that Windows updates seem to often take forever for some weird reason). I mean, exams are one thing, with an understanding prof you might be able to repeat it or just start later when your PC is ready, but what if he'd been doing something more important? I can't have my PC lock down for an upgrade while I'm in a business presentation on which my company's future hinges, or while I'm configuring a robot in a factory which might actually present a danger if something goes wrong etc. etc. etc.

I haven't really looked into workarounds for these issues because I don't use W10 enough to bother. Maybe they exist, maybe they don't, but I think I should not have to look for such things in the first place. By default, my OS should be set to send zero information on me to Microsoft, and do nothing which would interfere with my workflow unless I authorize it to do so.

Aside from that, from the times I've used W10, I actually found it pretty okay to be honest. As said, Linux just fits my personal needs and preferences better, but your mileage may vary, and that's quite alright I think.

[Linus_torvalds]

why dont you need to?

on windows i always had to reboot or i would be slow

 

First time i had installed linux on my pc was 7 years ago. Last 4 years i use it as my primary OS, for 2 years it's my only OS. (I am not intrested in games anymore that's the only reason i had windows) 

 

Yes that's right my pc was running for months before i restart it or shutdown. Now i have laptop so i always shut it down

 

in newer kernels 4 + you can even install newer kernel without restarting machine. that's crazy. 

Windows slows down over time. it's registry fills up with gurbage, that's not the case in linux.

Windows slows down if you run it many days or weeks, that does not happen to linux.

Windows file system fragments and it needs defragmentation, linux does not need, because it's file system does not fragment.

You can run the same distro for years, without reinstalling it, even if you are installing/uninstalling programs every day. Linux does not slow down. It can get faster over time depending what you do. It can get faster then it was when you installed it. Windows runs fast the day when you install it, then you install many prgrams and it gets slower and slower.

 

Aaaaaand viruses. There is much more chance to win jackpot in lottery without participating in it, then you get virus on linux it's not because linux is much better then windows (actually linux is much better then windows) it's because windows has much more market share. 

 

Also you may want to know that Googles, amazons, facebooks and etc servers are running on linux. At my work we run our servers on linux too.

[xiej]

Hey guys, so, I hear a lot about how Linus is so good and everyone should use it and such. but just how practical is it to the daily user? The daily user being someone with no programming experience, as I feel that Linux is an OS for programmers.